White ::Arcadia::
prompt: white
word count: 408
rating: K
/019. White.
“Admit it. You just want to play house.”
She hadn’t realized it until this case, but in some obscure corner of her mind, Scully is still clinging to the American Dream of her childhood: the hope that someday she’ll live in a manicured suburb with her husband and their fair-haired offspring.
She can see it now in all it’s vivid, pastel glory: this imaginary world of backyard barbecues and church every Sunday, complete with practical sedan and loyal golden retriever. It’s a far-removed fantasy, as romantic as it is out of reach.
It came to her cloudy, like a dream, like some far-flung memory from her ice-tea and tall-grass middle American upbringing. The rows of perfect houses and matching mailboxes, the procession of polite, primly dressed strangers welcoming her into the neighborhood, and the bright-eyed, serious looking man with a protective arm draped around her. She was so caught up in her reverie, it took her a moment to remember that the man was Mulder.
Although it’s so completely foreign, Scully feels she’s lived this scene a thousand times before, between the glossy pages of Better Homes and Gardens. She regards her partner now, from across the well lit kitchen, and she’s struck by how pedestrian he looks in full country-club regalia. His black trench coat always makes him seem even taller and thinner than he is, and the shadowy backdrop of the J. Edgar Hoover Building lends his face a certain quiet intensity. Back home he's the torrid, unflinching, self-appointed savior of mankind. But here, in candy-coloured Arcadia, in a pink polo and khakis, Mulder is a good-looking, but otherwise ordinary thirty-six-year-old man.
Here, people attend dinner parties and put up Christmas decorations and enjoy the luxury of fretting about frivolous things like teenage promiscuity and the price of gasoline. Here, every day isn't the end of the world.
Scully finds herself suddenly dizzy with visions of white dresses. And Mulder in black. And the china they’d have. Something traditional, and not too flowery…
She knows this will never be her life. But it's so nice to pretend, if only for a little while, that she is Laura instead of Dana, and they are Mr. and Mrs. Petri instead of Mr. and Mrs. Spooky. And she knows a part of him is relishing being boring, contented Rob instead of tortured, quixotic Fox.
“Woman, Git back in here an’ make me a sandwich!”
It’s all so deliriously domestic.
11/01/08
word count: 408
rating: K
/019. White.
“Admit it. You just want to play house.”
She hadn’t realized it until this case, but in some obscure corner of her mind, Scully is still clinging to the American Dream of her childhood: the hope that someday she’ll live in a manicured suburb with her husband and their fair-haired offspring.
She can see it now in all it’s vivid, pastel glory: this imaginary world of backyard barbecues and church every Sunday, complete with practical sedan and loyal golden retriever. It’s a far-removed fantasy, as romantic as it is out of reach.
It came to her cloudy, like a dream, like some far-flung memory from her ice-tea and tall-grass middle American upbringing. The rows of perfect houses and matching mailboxes, the procession of polite, primly dressed strangers welcoming her into the neighborhood, and the bright-eyed, serious looking man with a protective arm draped around her. She was so caught up in her reverie, it took her a moment to remember that the man was Mulder.
Although it’s so completely foreign, Scully feels she’s lived this scene a thousand times before, between the glossy pages of Better Homes and Gardens. She regards her partner now, from across the well lit kitchen, and she’s struck by how pedestrian he looks in full country-club regalia. His black trench coat always makes him seem even taller and thinner than he is, and the shadowy backdrop of the J. Edgar Hoover Building lends his face a certain quiet intensity. Back home he's the torrid, unflinching, self-appointed savior of mankind. But here, in candy-coloured Arcadia, in a pink polo and khakis, Mulder is a good-looking, but otherwise ordinary thirty-six-year-old man.
Here, people attend dinner parties and put up Christmas decorations and enjoy the luxury of fretting about frivolous things like teenage promiscuity and the price of gasoline. Here, every day isn't the end of the world.
Scully finds herself suddenly dizzy with visions of white dresses. And Mulder in black. And the china they’d have. Something traditional, and not too flowery…
She knows this will never be her life. But it's so nice to pretend, if only for a little while, that she is Laura instead of Dana, and they are Mr. and Mrs. Petri instead of Mr. and Mrs. Spooky. And she knows a part of him is relishing being boring, contented Rob instead of tortured, quixotic Fox.
“Woman, Git back in here an’ make me a sandwich!”
It’s all so deliriously domestic.
11/01/08